"Greece is not Ireland, we don't have a banking system ahead of itself, we have a credibility problem with sovereign that became a funding problem in international markets for our banking system".

In a speech at the London School of Economics, the minister warned that Eurostat's estimate for the budget deficit of Greece in 2009 would be "substantially" higher compared with that already announced.

Papaconstantinou said that Greece would end this year with the budget deficit 5.5% percentage points lower than it started but that the country had only taken the "first steps on a long and difficult road".

"Where are we at? Well, we're going to close the year having in fact closed the deficit by at least five and a half percentage points, maybe more".